But it’s like sudden Clarity. I feel like Reach is better.
Not in the gameplay sense. Bloom, Armor lock, all was annoying. Except for certain things.
But Reach is better, in the ‘memorable’ sense.
Just minutes ago, I heard some Reach music. And I realized that Halo 4’s music didn’t truly fit. 117, To Galaxy, Nemesis, those are pretty good, but lacking not only the main theme, but ODST’s Jazz music, or Reach’s amazing beats, is sad. Music goes to Halo 3/Reach.
Halo 3 was never my game. I bought it 7 months after Reach was released; Worse, I live in China, so most of the time I played there would be about…I believe back then, it was 8k players? On at once. I never got to play customs on that game; And Campaign for me was in a chinese voiceover, so not that memorable when I played it.
But Reach, oh Reach. My First Halo game (And I like to think I improved), Reach was…majestic. It took 3 days for me playing Reach before I popped onto Bungie forums and started realizing flaws in the game, but for months, it wasn’t apparent to me.
Firefight was great. Spartan Ops is not a replacement, nor an evolution. It’s completely different.
Campaign was awesome. Again, quite literally, in gameplay terms, Halo 4 is better, and featured the Chief, but Reach’s campaign was more memorable. From the epic falcon scenes to the final, heartbreaking, sacrifice. Halo 4 didn’t compare. I mean, take the Broadsword scene. It was awesome on the first run, then on every run after that all that came to my mind was “Why don’t you go up and fly right above all the traps and moving stuff”. And again, music added to that.
Multiplayer. When I got Halo 4, I shrieked. But on the first game, I felt no, real, emotion. Back on Reach, my first game was filled with awe. I sucked, 0 kills and exactly 21 deaths, but it was amazing. The DMR, the Assault Rifle, grabbing the sword, it was amazing.
Forge World was amazing too. Impact, Ravine and Erosion are cool maps, but they don’t match, especially with custom games. Reach was, IMO, the pinnacle. While your opinion may differ, I feel like with the great Forge, it made Reach the best.
Machinima. I know several great machinima creators, and trust me when I say this: Halo 4 does not please them. It may graphically look good, but it doesn’t please them.
And then there’s me.
I am a competitive-casual player. And very…high, on both spectrums. I play tons of casual when I can. But when I am not, there’s only really 2 things I would play: BTB and MLG. Sometimes Team Objective, but I loved the big team chaos and frenzy.
But after the first 2 days of playing Reach, I devolved into what you might call a noob. Negative 15 k/d spread all games, bad at aiming, swore at teammates for sucking and enemies for hacking (I thought they could hear me! haha…) and after that month, I decided to get better. And found out my aiming was better. So I started getting better, and better, and by the 3rd month I had Reach, I woulds say it was at that point that I began my true career. Because when that happened, I was, instead of the worst player in the game, the best. I don’t know how, but by then, I could play on the Halo Reach MLG playlist and come out on top. And that was where it was most fun. Arena wasn’t; It wasn’t reflected in my stats. But MLG, that was where all my teammates and enemies had mics. That was competitive.
When I got Halo 3, I knew that if Reach had that ranking system, Reach would be great.
But, yeah.
Halo: Reach, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ll miss you. Halo 4’s start is not comparable to you when I started with you.
I haven’t formally said this, but goodbye Reach, and Hello Halo 4. Hopefully 343 listens to us, the community, and I can create memories with you.